Ranching Women in Southern Alberta

Rachel Herbert

• Publisher: University of Calgary Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781552389140
• eBook ISBN: 9781552389140
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Once dominated by large cattle operations covering thousands of acres, Alberta in the 1880s-1930s saw a shift as small, family-owned ranches began to dot the province's southern plains. While this era of agriculture might conjure images of cowboys riding through the foothills or ranch hands tilling the prairie fields, women, too, played an integral part in this rapidly changing industry. Ranching Women in Southern Alberta explores the world of these women, and their efforts to ensure the economic viability of their family ranches and the social harmony of their families and communities. Rachel Herbert examines what life was like for ranching women, who faced a myriad of challenges while at the same time enjoying more personal freedom than their urban and European contemporaries. This book pays homage to the brave and talented women who rode the range, carving out a role for themselves during the dawn of the family ranching era.

Chapter One

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Independent Women Ranchers in an Emerging Industry

The majority of extant histories concerned with the early days of cattle ranching on the northern Great Plains focus on men’s labour and investment in the region. They emphasize the fiscal speculation that drew men with means and political power to invest in the early cattle industry and the sense of adventure and opportunity that pulled young cowboys and would-be ranchers to the West. Though cattle ranching was predominantly a masculine endeavour, it was not just men who sought to capitalize on the opportunities of the open range. In addition to operating ranches in partnership with their husbands, numerous women owned stock independently, and their experiences have gone largely unexamined. It is critical, however, to define what is meant by the terms women’s autonomy and independence in the context of the working ranch. As historian Dee Garceau explains, being independent did not necessarily mean living and working on the land alone – although occasionally this was the case and some women achieved “economic self-support.”¹ Ranching was most effectively carried out by a family enterprise working within the context of a supportive community. When women worked as part of a ranching family, “independence meant economic viability as a family unit” or “decision making power within a group enterprise.”² Examining a selection of women’s accounts of their experiences as the owners and managers of ranches and stock in early cattle-grazing districts reveals that scholars have been remiss in discounting women’s role and establishes ranch women’s historical significance. Women were effective players in the early cattle industry and their engagement in the business of raising beef increased their personal sense of autonomy and their status within cattle communities on the western frontier.

The ranching industry in the western grasslands region began as a deliberate response to a market-driven demand for food, both locally and internationally. In western Canada – then known as the North West Territories – the presence of the first North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) troops in 1874, an influx of trappers and prospectors, and the dispossession and patronization of First Nations populations created a need for a productive provisions industry.³ The success of grazing cattle south of the border and the increasing pressure due to high stocking rates on American ranges encouraged a northward movement of stock, while at the same time capital investment moved westward from major centres in England, Ontario, and Quebec. Due to the topographical and ecological similarity of the fescue grasslands of Montana and the region that is now southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, the first stock owners viewed the Canadian range as an untapped extension of the American livestock frontier. Small stockmen, many retired from service with the NWMP, were encouraged by the perceived potential for immediate sustained profit and introduced the first herds of cattle into the area in the mid-1870s.⁴ Operating on a manageable scale with minimal investment and small herds, the earliest open-range ranchers proved that there was profit to be made by raising grass-fed beef on the northwestern plains. It was not only men who decided to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the newly opened cattle-grazing territory; several women are known to have participated in the earliest days of the cattle industry.

Though the cattle frontier promised wealth, this potential was accompanied by the risk of the unknown and the instability of a sparsely populated place. Despite the hazards involved, many women knowingly accepted these insecurities and invested their money and lives in cattle ranching. One of the first domestic cattle herds brought across the border from Montana in 1875 was owned by a husband and wife, but the “herd was always known as Mrs. Armstrong’s” and the cattle were solely her responsibility and occupation.⁵ She ran a dairy on the Old Man River north of Fort Macleod and her cattle were included in the first roundup conducted in the district, in 1879. At that gathering Mrs. Armstrong’s interests were represented by her hired hand, Morgan. Though some of the first herds thrived and multiplied on the Canadian range, they were threatened by various factors such as weather, cattle rustling, and the near-starvation conditions that prompted the First Nations population to slaughter beef as a means of survival. Frustrated by the loss of substantial numbers of cattle, some stock owners decided to retreat south of the border. After reported losses to her herd following the roundup and having one of her cows shot through the head while penned in her corral, Mrs. Armstrong chose to move her herd back to Montana, where she and her hired man were subsequently murdered.⁶ Similar hazards faced those who began the earliest ranches in the United States. Agnes Morley Cleaveland and her two younger siblings accompanied their widowed mother into the wilds of New Mexico, where they invested their inheritance to establish a cattle ranch. Frontier conditions typical on both sides of the border plagued the Morley family’s endeavours, and though their ranch was a substantial size they barely managed to stay solvent. Cleaveland remembers how challenging it was for her mother:

Faced with the supervision of a well-stocked cattle range of a good many thousand acres, she rode and did her indomitable best to keep herself informed about what was happening to her livestock; but she was unable successfully to cope with the cattle-rustlers who abounded and with the proclivities of open-range cattle to wander. . . . That she survived the years that followed speaks volumes for her courage, her stamina, and her self-sacrifice. It would have been so very easy to sink under the all but overwhelming flood of hardships and disappointments that were hers.⁷

Mrs. Armstrong’s and the Morleys’ experiences in the earliest stages of the cattle industry demonstrate that women participated in the same business endeavours and faced the same challenges as their male counterparts. The fledgling industry and the open range of the Canadian West held the same promise of opportunity for both men and women, but the conditions of the frontier and the tragedies and hazards it held were equally indiscriminate.

In Canada the unstable advent of the ranching industry was followed by a period of intense growth: herd sizes expanded, capital investments increased, and government interest in the West rose. Increased law enforcement by the NWMP, the promise of a transcontinental railroad, and the federal government’s commitment of secure grazing rights encouraged serious investment in the cattle industry. The year 1881 marks the beginning of the “golden age” of the cattle kingdoms, when the Conservative government approved a lease system that enabled regulation of the large tracts of land used specifically for stock grazing.⁸ By 1885, the reach of the railroad into the ranchlands had increased market opportunities for cattle ranchers. This period is infamous for cronyism on the part of major investors and famous for the integral role played by increasingly skilful cowboys. The fact that some women also participated and prospered in the early cattle business, acting as both owners and operators of ranches and not merely as helpmates to their husbands, is little known. As interest grew in the new frontier that stretched north from the American border and west from the prairies of central Canada, the belief that the cattle country was a decidedly masculine realm emerged. In the popular consciousness, and in academia, the stories of independent women ranchers have been subsumed by analyses of the ranching moguls and the exploits of the cowboys they employed. Feminist scholar Catherine Cavanaugh argues that “in constructing and reconstructing the West – from wilderness wasteland to economic hinterland to agrarian paradise – expansionist discourse perpetuated the myth of the west as a ‘manly’ space, assigning to it a moral and political force that underwrote elite Anglo-Canadian men’s hegemony in the territories.”⁹ The same emphasis on the masculine nature of the frontier was propagated in the United States by the conventions of historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis that promoted individualism and viewed each new landscape and wilderness area as territory available for domination by men and their economic endeavours.¹⁰ Esteemed American historian Walter Prescott Webb stated that “in the final analysis the cattle kingdom arose at that place where men began to manage cattle on horseback.”¹¹ Despite this proscriptive ideology, many women bucked convention and sought to profit by using the resources of frontier environments. As Cavanaugh writes, “while the possibilities for women (and men) were shaped by masculinist cultural context, in the shifting realities of the turn-of the century, Euro-Canadian women’s responses to cultural constructions of the West as a manly space were neither inevitable nor always predictable.”¹² As the example of successful small-scale rancher Agnes Bedingfeld demonstrates, the “golden age” was not merely a period of huge ranches sustained by the myth of frontier masculinity and individualistic male enterprise; women working in cooperation with their community were also able to prosper in the emerging industry.

Despite the efforts of the large ranchers to keep the range open exclusively for grazing, squatters and homesteaders began to infiltrate the grasslands of the Canadian West as soon as it became known as a cattle region. In 1883, Agnes Bed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction: Women on the Ranching Frontier
• 1. Independent Women Ranchers in an Emerging Industry
• 2. The Family Ranch: Women in the Barnyard and Beyond
• 3. Gender Roles and Working Partnerships on the Ranch
• 4. Childbirth on the Ranching Frontier
• 5. Clothing and Saddles: Manifestations of Adaptation
• 6. The Significance of Horses to Women’s Emancipation
• Conclusion: At Home on the Range
• Appendix: “My Sunset Childhood” by Constance Ings Loree
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index